alt.hn

1/13/2025 at 4:10:21 AM

Sutton Hoo and Syria: Anglo-Saxons who served in the Byzantine army?

 https://academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ehr/ceae213/7941799

by benbreen

1/15/2025 at 11:33:07 PM

Much later, but this English guy went to Italy as a mercenary and spent much of his life there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkwood

As someone who lived in Italy myself, although didn't do any stabbing or slashing during my time there, I thought it was an interesting story.

by davidw

1/16/2025 at 12:25:29 AM

What an interesting life to have lived.

> Evidence of his craft was seen in his tactics, which included feigned retreats, ambushes and the use of false information.

Reminds me of "Intelligence in War" by Keegan, which discussed the use of such strategies, mostly in naval battles, from antiquity to the modern era.

> In the 30 years that he served as a captain, Hawkwood's earnings ranged between 6,000 and 80,000 florins annually (in comparison, a skilled Florentine craftsman at the same time earned 30 florins a year).

Quite the pay for a soldier, even if a mercenary!

by LeftHandPath

1/16/2025 at 6:35:44 AM

I bet he couldn't even paint. Michelangelo was paid 80,000 Florins a year to paint the Sistine Chapel, and he had to buy his own supplies, and hire his own workers... Something about showing them heaven, vs sending them there....

by ForOldHack

1/16/2025 at 2:19:58 AM

Was the pay meant to cover the troops under his command, as opposed to his personal pay?

by rgblambda

1/16/2025 at 8:59:37 AM

As I understand it, those were gross payments -- ~"for John Hawkwood and his company of merrie men" -- and he paid his men out of that.

But some of their compensation probably also came from whatever they were allowed to loot when they took a city -- which of course gave commanders an incentive to let their men loot a lot, so they'd be happy with that and not demand as much regular pay out of the commander's gross fee from his employer.

by CRConrad

1/16/2025 at 4:07:44 AM

There were a lot of these guys around that time. England imported a ton of soldiers into France for the Hundred Years War, then just didn't take them back home when they signed a treaty, so they all took up residence as mercenaries, brigands, and extortionists basically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_company In a feudal era where power structures were less centralized and more about personal relationships, it was easier to smoothly transition between a 'proper' noble and somebody who 'just' owned a fort and a bunch of soldiers to collect rent with, and there was always somebody willing to pay to make you their neighbor's problem.

by recursivecaveat

1/16/2025 at 10:26:23 AM

OT: I've read here & there that also Finns were recruited by Byzantium. "Varangians." A rep for being gung-ho. Any pointers appreciated.

by euroderf

1/16/2025 at 2:08:29 PM

You mean the Varangian Guard, personal security detail of the Emperor?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard

TL;DR: in the beginning mainly Kievan Rus and Norse (but apparently no Finns), later mainly Anglo-Saxons.

by flohofwoe

1/16/2025 at 3:14:56 AM

The (fringe) idea that Muhammad was partly Anglo-Saxon or some sort of northerner always tickled me. He was tall, reddish hair, light skinned.

These dates sort of line up.

by emmelaich

1/16/2025 at 3:37:35 AM

Red hair appears to have originated in Central Asia. Blue eyes and blonde hair likewise also originated in Central Asia or the Middle East (but not necessarily the same places). All of these phenotypes used to be more widespread in Eurasia and North Africa. Today they're associated with Northern Europe because of the very high prevalence, but you can still find clusters of populations elsewhere with significant prevalence, and (because of their recessiveishness--it's complicated) it's not uncommon for them to pop up randomly in populations we today would never associate with those phenotypes.

Blonde hair also emerged independently in the Indo-Pacific where today you can find it among some populations in Oceania with people who have very dark skin and tightly curled hair.

Before the most recent waves of migration from Central Asia and the Middle East into Europe over the past several millennia, "native" Europeans are believed to have had very dark hair and somewhat darker skin, similar to what we might associate with some modern day Mediterranean populations.

by wahern

1/16/2025 at 3:35:15 AM

If you’re interested in an accurate description of the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم look into a translation of “Shama’il Tirmidhi”, you’ll only have to read the first chapter or so.

by tolerance

1/16/2025 at 7:13:52 AM

I have nothing to add to this except that the single Unicode character for PBUH looks cool: ﷺ

by ipnon

1/13/2025 at 4:53:46 AM

I think it's interesting they argue for the people moving, and bringing goods back over trade. I would have said there's a case for trade. Objects move around, acrue value by distance from source. Obviously, people are valuable too and I guess "I can't pay you but the loot is rich" might apply too.

by ggm

1/16/2025 at 7:09:48 AM

Romans had contacted Britain by the 1st century BC (the history buffs amongst you may have heard of the leader of this expedition). The Empire then spent centuries building infrastructure between Western Europe and all of the Mediterranean. These roads and byways were constantly traveled for commerce, diplomacy, education and tourism. They did not magically disappear when Rome was sacked for the second time in the 5th century AD. It is more than feasible that Anglo-Saxons of the 7th century visited Byzantium and returned to Britain, it is a certainty.

by ipnon

1/17/2025 at 6:39:20 PM

Trade routes passed through the British isles long before the Romans. Cornish tin was highly prized for making Bronze. Burials around Stonehenge have been excavated by archeologists and tests showed the people buried there spent extended periods in the Alps. Stonehenge predates the Romans by thousands of years.

by nuc1e0n

1/16/2025 at 9:05:40 AM

> Romans had contacted Britain by the 1st century BC (the history buffs amongst you may have heard of the leader of this expedition).

Eh, wasn't that...? I think more than the "history buffs" amongst us may at least have heard of that guy.

by CRConrad

1/16/2025 at 12:49:43 AM

Wouldn't be shocked. Isn't it a historical fact that the eastern and western roman empires used "barbarians" in their armies? If the vikings fought for these empires, then why not the anglo saxons and other germanic peoples?

by stonesthrowaway

1/16/2025 at 9:17:23 AM

> Isn't it a historical fact that the eastern and western roman empires used "barbarians" in their armies?

Yup.

> If the vikings fought for these empires, then why not the anglo saxons and other germanic peoples?

That's not even in question any more, it's also a historical fact.

The Varangian Guard in Constantinople started out, as the name implies (or at least used to imply[1]), with mainly Swedes come down via the Rus rivers, but a century or three later was very mixed with Franks and Anglo-Saxons, and towards the end may have consisted mainly of the latter.

[1]: I was taught, in history class in Sweden looong ago, that "Nordic raiders faring west from Norway and Denmark were called Vikings, and those faring east from Denmark and Sweden were called Varangians." But given that the name 'Varangians' seems to come primarily precisely from the Byzantian Imperial Guard, maybe the definition should follow that, and acknowledge the shifting ethnic composition of their origin.

by CRConrad

1/16/2025 at 6:33:21 AM

The Sutton Hoo mask, was a featured article on some wiki... no hint on where the damn thing came from. Now we have a fantastic theory.

by ForOldHack

1/16/2025 at 9:04:50 AM

history is so fascinating who values it even more so

by gunian